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Russia realises there are easier ways of killing people

The Russian secret service, known these days as the FSB, says an internal inquiry has led them to conclude they’re killing people in unnecessarily fancy and showoffy ways.

“I blame the James Bond films,” said spokesman Sergei Sonovabich today. “All those lighters that turn into guns, cars with ejector seats, briefcases that fire a stream of knockout gas… our technical geeks love all that stuff.”

“The trouble is, when we tell them we want to kill someone in… let’s say Salisbury, to pick a place completely at random… they come with some ridiculous scheme involving an extremely rare nerve agent and a pizza napoletana, making it completely bloody obvious it was us. Which it wasn’t of course, I want to make that entirely clear.”

“Honestly, I thought they’d learned their lesson after that polonium business a few years ago, which also wasn’t us. Don’t they realise you can kill people in completely untraceable ways by shooting them, stabbing them or pushing them under a bus? If we wanted to kill people abroad, which of course we don’t.”

STOP PRESS Sergei Sonovabich has been found dead in both Moscow and St Petersburg, having been strapped to a table and sliced in half with a high powered laser. The FSB denied having heard of their former spokesman, adding that they also know nothing about what’s going to happen to his family on Wednesday.